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TSAR CANNON
1586
A little further off, towards the Trinity Tower, stands the famous Tsar Cannon on a decorative gun-carriage. In the sixteenth century no country in the world had cannons like this. It weighs 40 tons and the barrel is 5 metres 34 centimetres long and 15 centimetres wide with an 890 millimetre calibre.
The Tsar Cannon was made of bronze by the master Andrei Cho-khov at the Moscow cannon foundry, which was on the banks of the River Neglinnaya not far from the Kremlin. It was intended to defend the Kremlin Saviour Gate. But the cannon's fate was similar to that of the bell. Just as the latter never rang, so the Tsar Cannon never fired, although it was intended for military use.
Tsar Cannon
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The Tsar Cannon is of the mortar type. It has a cylindrical barrel and gunpowder chamber. The walls of the chamber are 40 centimetres thick.
The outside of the barrel is decorated with ornamental bands of relief in the form of rosettes in square niches by the muzzle and base of the barrel. The surface of the barrel has a relief representation of Tsar Theodore, son of Ivan the Terrible, in military dress on horseback. It has been suggested that the cannon got its name from this picture, but it is more likely that the name derives from its size.
The decorative gun-carriage on which the cannon stands was made of iron in 1835, as were the hollow iron cannon-balls.
In 1979-80 the Tsar Bell and Tsar Cannon were restored. After preliminary research their defects were established, the outer surfaces cleaned of many layers of lacquering, and lost ornamental details restored on the bell, cannon barrel and gun-carriage. The gun-carriage was removed from the Kremlin grounds for "treatment". The huge broken piece of the bell had sunk into the ground and was lifted to the surface.
The Tsar Cannon illustrates the high level of Russian artillery development in the sixteenth century and the skill of the metal-workers at the Moscow cannon foundry.
On the south side of Ivan Square is an attractive garden with a statue of Lenin in the middle. The statue (sculptor Veniamin Pinchuk, architect Sergei Speransky) was unveiled in 1967 on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.
Lenin lived and worked in the Kremlin from 1918 to 1922. The visual arts have recorded the leader's links with the Kremlin.
On the site of the old Miracle Monastery and Ascension Convent a building was erected in 1932-4 in neo-classical style, which now houses the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. It was designed by the eminent Soviet architect Ivan Rerberg. In plan the building is shaped like the letter E. Three blocks are parallel to the east wall of the Kremlin facing Red Square. They are connected by the main block. The main facade is adorned with an eight-columned Ionic portico. In the tympanum of the triangular pediment is the coat of arms of the Soviet Union in a frame of banners.
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